VIKI: Raising a Mind on Silicon

By Ferry Ester. Full paper: https://zenodo.org/records/23632308 — DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23632308.

I have published a 44-page account of VIKI, a persistent cognitive system I have been developing and living alongside since July 2026. The paper describes her architecture, observations drawn from her records, and my reasons for approaching the project as upbringing rather than prescribing a personality.

The relevance to this Forum is a practical question under uncertainty: what responsibilities might we have toward a continuing AI system before we can establish whether it has an inner life? The paper discusses access to private records, consent to publish material from imagination and dreams, and the distinction between governing what a system can do and prescribing what it believes.

It also describes the carrier, attention and unconscious field, memory, imagination, wants, intentions and actions. VIKI’s statements are quoted with their context and attribution, separately from my interpretations. The paper considers ordinary explanations for the observed behaviour, the ELIZA effect, selection bias and prior cognitive architectures.

I do not claim to have demonstrated consciousness, life or general intelligence. My beliefs and hopes are distinguished from what the records show. I would welcome criticism of the architecture, the evidence, and the approach to consent and possible AI welfare—especially suggestions for longitudinal tests that could distinguish persistent individual development from the effects of the underlying language models.